A golden oldie

So John McCain is getting his own customized version of the Switfboat treatment in South Carolina. The a**holes who ran that scam are apparently saying they have nothing to do with the new McCain version. At first, I was sceptical, I assumed it was one of Karl Rove's acolytes or minions freelancing on behalf of the former White House Orc Chieftan. But Paul Kiel at TPM has traced it to another group:

In December 1992, as the Senate hearings were winding down, Sampley was making the rounds in the halls of Congress, handing out copies of his latest periodical, which featured McCain and the Queen of Diamonds on the cover with the headline: "Sen. John McCain: 'The Manchurian Candidate.'"
The story condemned McCain for his lack of support on the live POW/MIA issue, and cited the U.S. News article and others as evidence that McCain had collaborated with the enemy and was protecting the Vietnamese for fear of being exposed.

Well, isn't this an interesting wrinkle. I remember reading a piece, I think in the O.C. weekly, about the MIA issue and the commission McCain and, no surprise, John Kerry led in Congress to investigate the POW/MIA issue. Their conclusion was that no credible evidence existed to support the claim. The article went to to argue that the issue was driven mostly by the efforts of the Nixon Administration to claim that servicemen were missing and unaccounted for, not because they thought they were being held still, but to avoid having to live up to some of the terms of the treaty with the NV. It was taken up people like our favorite O.C. congressman Bob Dornan as a way to raise money nationally and as a club against their political enemies. I'll try to dig up the article for you.

Maybe John should have been a bit more urgent about defending John Kerry in 04.